Featuring:
Partner, Creed & Gowdy
Bryan Gowdy is a board-certified appellate lawyer. His practice is limited to handling appeals, post-conviction motions, and trial support for matters likely to be appealed. His practice encompasses all substantive areas of the law, including plaintiff's injury and products liability, commercial cases, criminal law, and family law. He has briefed and orally argued appeals before the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, the Supreme Court of Florida, and Florida's district courts of appeal. He also has handled appeals in the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Circuits. He is AV-rated by Martindale Hubbell and has been selected as a Top 100 in Florida Super Lawyer, Top 25 in Jacksonville Super Lawyer, and a "Legal Elite" by Florida Trend Magazine. In 2019, Mr. Gowdy began serving as the Chair for the Florida Justice Association Amicus Curiae Committee.
Before joining the firm, Mr. Gowdy was with the national law firm of McGuireWoods LLP, where he primarily handled commercial litigation at the trial and appellate level. Mr. Gowdy began his legal career as a law clerk for federal judges at the trial and appellate level. Mr. Gowdy attended the University of Florida Levin College of Law, where he was first in his class, a member of the Order of the Coif, and the management editor of the Florida Law Review.
Before law school, Mr. Gowdy was an active-duty surface warfare officer in the United States Navy, and he graduated from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
Of Counsel, GrayRobinson
Charlie Trippe practiced civil litigation for the 14 years between 1980 and 1994, most of that with Jones Day, where he was a partner in the New York office. He was the chief litigation counsel of CSX Transportation, Inc., one of the country’s largest freight railroads, from 1994 through 2001. He returned to private practice in Jacksonville in 2001, continuing to practice in the area of civil litigation. He also served as General Counsel to both the Governor of Florida (2010-2011) and the Attorney General of Florida (2020-2022), and as the Chief Counsel of the Federal Aviation Administration (2017-2019). Since 2025 he has been Of Counsel to the Florida firm of GrayRobinson. He is a Florida Supreme Court Certified Circuit Civil Mediator, as well as an experienced arbitrator.
Attorney, Pacific Legal Foundation
Luke A. Wake is an attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation. Prior to joining PLF, he was a senior staff attorney at the NFIB Small Business Legal Center.
Wake has particular expertise on environmental and land use issues, and has worked on numerous other constitutional issues and matters of importance to small business owners. He is an ardent defender of private property rights, which he believes are essential to the free enterprise system and the foundation of American liberty. As a strong advocate of individual rights and economic liberties, he has built his career defending small business interests.
Wake has focused on a whole host of issues, from employment law matters to regulatory compliance. In addition to serving as a resource for small business owners, Wake is committed to ensuring that the voice of small business is heard in the nation’s courts. As an appellate practitioner, Wake has focused particularly on informing the courts on matters of administrative law and on issues under the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause. He is also working to advance small business interests in law review articles, and was recently published in the Berkeley Journal of Law & Ecology. See R.S. Radford & Luke A. Wake, Deciphering and Extrapolating: Searching for Sense in Penn Central, 38 Ecology L.Q. 731, 746-747 (2011).
Before joining the Legal Center’s team, Wake completed a prestigious two-year fellowship as an attorney in the Pacific Legal Foundation’s College of Public Interest Law. Wake is a graduate of Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland Ohio, and is a member of the California Bar. He completed his undergraduate studies at Elon University in North Carolina in 2006 where he focused on political theory and corporate communications.
